Up the road I saw blackbirds on the edge of a pine box. When I got there the birds flew a few feet away, to the other side. I looked down in the box. There were red apples, ripe, with stems still on them. A sign on the box said Take One. So I took one. My, it was heavy, and when I bit into it, you would not believe such sweetness. I walked on, eating it down to the core. When I finished, I threw the core out over a cornfield. A bird flew to catch it before it hit the ground, but it fell anyway. The bird followed. And I stood there, not seeing anything but the stalks moving in the morning wind. I waited, and the bird came up, carrying the core. He flew off across the field, carrying this thing, about twice the size of his own head. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE HILL WIFE: THE SMILE by ROBERT FROST THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON THE SKELETON IN ARMOR by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW AMORETTI: 70 by EDMUND SPENSER I HAVE A GARMENT by ABRAHAM IBN EZRA AT TWO-AND-TWENTY by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 27. THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE IN LOVE by PHILIP AYRES AN ASSURANCE by NICHOLAS BRETON ON THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES, LORD HERBERT by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |